


Asterisk

by lalejandra



Category: Fringe (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Kink Bingo 2010, Piercing, Transformative Works Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-12
Updated: 2010-08-12
Packaged: 2019-07-14 10:10:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16038308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra
Summary: Okay: kinky. Whatever that even means.Contains: graphic description of piercing and related pain/blood; mentions scratches, bruises, biting. Written for Kink Bingo 2010.





	Asterisk

When Callie -- beautiful, smart, red-headed Callie who teaches high school kids biology and is _so boring_ \-- kicked her out of their apartment, Astrid packed up and rented a tiny apartment in Brookline. Callie had said, "I just can't deal with you, with this, with us." Astrid figures it's for the best -- now she's close enough to Walter's lab that if she feels like stretching her muscles, she can walk there in under an hour, but far enough away that she doesn't have to worry about running into Peter or Agent Dunham in the local bars or parks. She missed the view of the bridge out her window, until it was tainted by the death of that poor girl whose eye Walter plucks out. Now she doesn't miss anything, not even Callie's inability to commit to anything but tenth graders and the truly ugly brown couch Astrid begged her to get rid of.

Astrid is a pretty smart woman, if she does say so herself, and she knew that serial monogamy wasn't exactly healthy. Instead of immediately going out and trying to find a new girlfriend -- and Astrid has never had to try very hard at all, so it's _weird_ \-- she threw herself into work. Fringe Division is amazing, and even though Astrid often ends up babysitting Walter, she loves it. Walter's lab is her new girlfriend, she jokes to Mom, and she finds sometimes she misses the sex, and sometimes she misses the other stuff, but she doesn't miss sleeping next to someone as much as she thought she would.

This is the longest Astrid has been single since kindergarten -- since the day she brought Sarah Rosenthal home, clutching her sweaty hand, and told Mom, "We're going to get married when we grow up!" -- and she's feeling... itchy.

Sometimes she does find herself petting the cow without thinking about it, missing skin under her hands, but she pushes it out of her mind -- she can't imagine meeting anyone who'd be okay with her terrible Walter babysitting schedule, the two a.m. phone calls, the weird smells that cling to her clothes. If they aren't in the lab together, Walter calls her every morning at 6:42 a.m. and says, "Good morning, Agent Farnsworth! Do you want to get a root beer float?" and she says, "Good morning, Walter. I think I'll have a root beer float with lunch. See you later!" and they hang up.

(She mentions it to Mom one day, and Mom laughs -- "6:42 a.m. is when you were born," Mom tells her. "What a great coincidence!"

Astrid is almost positive it _isn't_ a coincidence, but she can't possibly bring it up with Walter. That's just as weird as the stuff they see every day -- and she doesn't want to accidentally hurt his feelings by pointing out that _he_ is the weirdest of them all. She does that enough.)

The point is that Astrid can't for the life of her imagine a person who'd be okay with that, with not knowing what Astrid does all day, and be -- be the kind of person Astrid likes. Yeah, kind to animals, willing to listen to Astrid talk about butterflies and cryptography, doesn't care about the computer parts strewn across the living room floor.

And yes, okay, kinky, whatever that even _means_. It's part of the reason Callie broke up with her, Astrid is pretty sure -- Astrid likes pain, can take a lot of it, enjoys it. Not scary pain, not humiliating pain, but _fun_ pain. Sharp and hot. Aches and welts and scratches. Bruises that last for weeks that she can press on during the day when she feels tired or frustrated. The dullness of a bite that leaves a mark that lasts for days.

Callie wasn't into it, but dutifully bit Astrid's collarbone and scratched her arms; the girlfriend before Callie thought it was weird at first, but got sort of into it, until she finally broke up with Astrid for being "too vanilla." But some things are easy for Astrid -- coming out of the closet, translating Urdu or Farsi, identifying butterflies, saying, "I love you." Other things are just... they're just hard. Astrid doesn't want to go play in a club or involve other people or join kinky social networking sites and go to formal teas. She just wants to get fucked. She just wants someone who's going to hurt her as much as she loves her.

One of the normal nights, the nights Astrid leaves work at a regular time (well, after six, but at least she's not sleeping next to the cow), she stops at home to change into tight black jeans and a black tank top and black boots. She is halfway to the bar when she realizes that she doesn't _want_ to pick someone up and bring them home and beg them to spank her or bite her -- as much as she _does_ want someone to spank her and bite her.

She turns around and goes to a piercing parlor instead. The kid behind the counter is smaller than she is, with bleached-blond dreads falling over his forehead, the coins woven into them clanking when he moves his head. He looks up from a huge textbook when her entrance rings the bell over the door.

"Hey," she says, and grins at him. "I want to have my nipples pierced."

He looks more than a little surprised. "Are you sure? It hurts a lot," he warns.

She laughs. "Trust me, it could not possibly hurt enough."

His eyebrows -- each with two rings twisted together -- rise high, but he returns her grin. "I need your ID, then, and..." He slides a piece of paper across the counter to her. "Fill this out, read the bullet points, sign the bottom."

The bullet points explain that getting pierced is risky and that the shop isn't liable if she gets a blood clot or something. They're all the same; when she went for her lamentably short-lived tongue piercing in college, she got the same skeptical look from the piercer, and the same warning that it would hurt. It did, but it was -- it was _good_ , and that was the first time she realized it.

She thinks it's probably a pretty cliché story, but it's her story, anyway.

The guy comes back with a photocopy of her license, and returns the original to her. She tucks it into her wallet, scrawls her name on the paper, and slides it back to him.

"I'm thinking rings?" she says. "But I don't know."

"You probably want to start with curved barbells." He reaches under the counter and pulls out a tray of jewelry. "They're just easier to deal with at first. Then you can replace them with whatever. How..." He looks down and she thinks he might be blushing. "How big are your nipples? Do you want a larger gauge, or..."

"I really want the biggest ones you have," she confides, leaning over the counter and staring down at the glittering jewelry. "But I think I should stick with the regular --"

"Sixteen," he tells her.

"Yeah, sixteen. I should stick with that for now. That's what my navel ring is, too, I think."

He nods. "Probably." He's not blushing anymore. He plucks out two long, slim, curved, metal rods, and four balls with screws on the ends. "These are internally threaded -- so the balls screw in, instead of the other way around, which means --"

"-- the threads aren't going through the piercing," she finishes for him. "Yeah."

"Okay, come on back with me, and I'll get these disinfected. Just sit in that chair, and I'll be right back."

Astrid follows him around the counter, behind a black curtain, and into a small room painted a warm yellow. The chair is a big, black chair, like the kind at the dentist, and when she sits down, it's easy to relax into it. She twists her fingers into the hem of her tank top, and wishes she'd worn a shirt with buttons, or at least a bra.

When he finally comes back, she's translated all the signs on the walls into their nearest approximation in three of the five languages she speaks.

"First we're going to lie you back," he says, and puts down the tray he's carrying. "Then I'm going to mark each nipple with ink spots to guide where I'm going to put the needle. Then the disinfecting, then the clamp, then the needle. How are you doing?"

"I'm good," says Astrid nervously. "I just -- you know. Wasn't expecting to do this tonight, and now I'm overthinking it."

"You sure you want to keep going?" He raises his eyebrows at her, and when she nods, he stays still. "Listen, right up until the moment the needle goes in, you can change your mind, okay? And if we do the first one and you decide you hate it, I can pull out the needle without putting jewelry in."

"Okay." Astrid nods and takes a deep breath. "I'm fine. I'm fine. Let's go."

"Shirt up," he says, and turns around. She hears the rubbery swishing of latex gloves. He gives her a tiny smile when he faces her again. "Seriously, I can't pierce you through the tank top."

"What's your name?" she asks. "You know mine, plus you're about to see me without a shirt --"

"Nicky." He comes toward her with a pen, and she lifts up her shirt. The pen tickles a little, and her nipples get hard, even though the room is pretty warm. She can feel herself flushing a little, even though she's not really embarrassed.

"You must see a million breasts, huh, Nicky?" she says, looking up at the ceiling. He makes a humming sound. "Do they all look really weird, or do they all look really normal?"

"Normality doesn't exist; it's made up to make people want to conform."

She can't help it -- she lets out a sharp laugh that jerks her body. When she looks at Nicky, he's rolling his eyes and pulling an alcohol wipe out of a package to rub away the ink line on her breast. Her nipples are much, much darker than the rest of her skin, and she wonders how he can possibly see the black of the ink where he's made the marks.

When he steps back, she looks in the mirror he holds out and admires how even the dots are. "I wasn't laughing at you," she says as she lies back again. "Someone I work with says stuff like that sometimes."

He puts on a new pair of gloves and opens the needle. She feels the anticipation in her stomach, like the feeling she used to get right before a really good kiss or the first brush of a new tongue on her clit. Sometimes she feels it now when Walter exclaims over a project, or when Agent Dunham comes rushing in with her hair flying away and her coat flapping -- that always heralds a new adventure, a scary adventure, and something new and weird and usually incredibly gross on the lab tables.

"I didn't think you were," he says. "Take a deep breath, and let it out when I get to three, okay?"

"Okay," she says, and breathes in deeply as he counts. She wants to look down and watch, his black-gloved hands deftly moving the clamp and her nipple and positioning the needle -- but the anticipation of the pain that's about to come is too much, and she drops her head back, closes her eyes against the yellow ceiling.

On three, on her exhale, the needle pops through her skin, and she feels it all through her body. Her hands convulse, and she chokes on her own spit. When she can breathe again, she gasps and groans at the same time, props herself up on her elbows, and looks down. The needle is through her nipple, and Nicky's pulled the clamp off. Her nipple is throbbing, and she can feel it in every pulse point, and between her legs.

"I'm going to put the jewelry through now," he tells her, and does it. It's quick, and it aches and hurts, and she flexes her hands. Her skin gets pinched a little when he screws the balls on. When he steps back, she can't catch her breath again -- the stainless steel jewelry winks at her from her nipple, so incongruously shiny and bright against the dark wrinkliness of her skin.

"Oh my god," she gasps, except her words slur as they come out of her mouth, like she's drunk, like she's losing it.

"Nice endorphins, right?" Nicky's holding the clamps, waiting patiently.

"Nice," she manages, and lays back down. The second one hurts a lot more; she feels like her eyes roll back in her head and her whole body is being stabbed with a giant needle. Her hands flop off the chair, and her jaw clenches. Then it's over, a split second that felt like ten minutes, and by the time she convinces her eyes to open, Nicky's tightening the balls and stepping away.

"It hits everybody different," he says to her as he tosses the needles into a red sharps box. "I barely felt it when I got mine done, but last week I did someone who really did stop me before I put the jewelry in." He keeps talking, telling her about his own piercings, how he did his own eyebrows and ears and once pierced someone's perineum, and just yesterday he did a set of surface piercings on his girlfriend's stomach in the shape of an asterisk.

"I work with someone who calls me asterisk," she says, feeling hazy.

"Is he the one who tells you that no one is normal?" Nicky's pulling on a new pair of gloves. He comes over with cotton balls and a small black bottle and starts to dab at her nipples.

"Yes, he's a sci -- oh, that burns," she says, and moans a little despite herself.

"Tea tree oil," he says, and shows her the label. "It's antiseptic and antibacterial. You can get some for yourself, but a sea salt soak is just as good, and regular antibacterial soap is fine as long as it's fragrance and dye free."

She closes her eyes and sinks into the sharp minty smell; it feels like getting lemon juice in a paper cut, but better. Nicky keeps talking, going over the aftercare instructions, but she knows he'll give her a piece of paper on her way out with the list.

The endorphins are waning, and her breasts _hurt_. She's dreading standing up and letting them hang free and brush against her shirt, but can't wait at the same time.

"Ready?" Nicky says to her, and it takes her a moment to realize that it's time to stand up. Nicky's taped some gauze over her nipples, and she's grateful when she pulls down her shirt and there's no discernable change in sensation.

She leans on him when she stands up; her legs are wobbly. It's amazing. She takes slow yoga breaths for a few moments, and then finds she can stand just fine.

"Eat something hearty," he advises her as they walk out, "and drink some OJ." He gives her the aftercare instructions, and takes her credit card. She tips him in cash -- he did a great job, and was much nicer than he had to be, she knows. No one's come inside this whole time -- and when she looks at the clock, she's surprised that it's hardly been twenty minutes. She's ready to go home, eat something, and crash for twelve hours.

Except it's already almost eight o'clock, so she's only got ten hours and fifty minutes until Walter calls to ask if she wants to get a root beer float for breakfast with him. She probably won't sleep when she gets home, either, but will stay up with a mirror admiring her nipples.

She can't wait until they heal enough for her to pull on them and twist them. She feels the lack of a partner keenly now, because she wants for someone to gnaw on them, to suck and lick them, to ground her in her body and make her feel it.

Next, she thinks, she's going to try this with her clit.

  



End file.
